The Dower House Mystery (2 page)

Amabel felt Daphne's slight figure shake.

“Why, Daffy dear, how can I?”

“There must be a way, there
must
. Can't we sell something?”

“Darling, what?”

“Oh, I don't know.” She turned, leaning against Amabel, and looked about the room. “The miniatures—aren't miniatures worth quite a lot?”

“It depends who painted them. These are not valuable—and, besides, Daffy, I couldn't sell things like that.”

Daphne drew away, got up.

“Why couldn't you?”

“Well, I couldn't. But indeed, they're not valuable.”

“In fact, we've got nothing that's worth twopence!” She laughed—a little hard laugh. “Twopence or two hundred pounds is all the same if you're a pauper, isn't it?” Then, with a sudden change of manner, “You could borrow it though—I'm sure you could borrow it.”

“I won't borrow what I can't pay back. How can I? It isn't honest.”

“But you don't understand. If I marry Jimmy, I shall be able to pay you back a hundred times over. Mummy, think what it means. Think! It's my one chance of getting out of all this. You know it is. If I was to live in Little Middlebury on two hundred a year, you should have kept me here and sent me to the village school. You didn't. You let Agatha have me. You let her send me to Paris and Lausanne. You let me see all the things that I want—and then you say, ‘No, you can't have them. Come and live in Little Middlebury, and take an interest in the parish pump.'”

“Daffy!” said Amabel, very pale.

“It's true. You know quite well that it's true. I don't blame Agatha; I blame you. You shouldn't have let her have me. I suppose you'll say that you thought she'd provide for me. Well, so did I, and so did everyone. But, now she's married that little worm of a More-land, he'll take jolly good care she doesn't provide for anyone but him. No, Agatha's no earthly—I knew that the moment she told me she was going to be married.”

“Daphne, wait a minute. Give me Agatha's letter. I dropped it; and there was something—something about Mrs. Studland.” She took the sheet, turning it until she found what she was looking for. “Agatha's writing—really! She says: ‘Amber Studland wants Daphne to go to Egypt.'” Her voice died into silence as she read on: “‘Jimmy Malleson is going too. If you can possibly raise the money, let her go. It's a good investment. I believe he's seriously attracted; and there's money to burn there. There's surely something you can sell. I'll give the child a frock or two, but I can't do more. Cyril is inclined to be jealous, and I must walk warily.'”

“What does she say? Here, let me see!” Daphne's tone was sharp. She pulled the letter out of her mother's hand, glanced at it, and dropped it on the floor with an “Oh, damn Cyril!”

“Daffy, please!”

“Well, I told you it was no earthly. Now it's up to you. I
must
go.”

Amabel looked steadily at her daughter.

“Daphne, don't speak to me like that. You mustn't, you really mustn't.”

Daphne flushed. How Victorian, this insistence on their relationship! Her anger rose at it. The soft, hurt look in Amabel's eyes hardened her. That everlasting appeal to sentiment!

“Oh, let's be reasonable,” she said. “Listen to Agatha, if you won't listen to me. Spend two hundred pounds now, and give me my chance. In six months I can pay you back a dozen times over.”

“Daphne, don't! No, no, I really can't bear to hear you talk like that. You say, let us talk reasonably, but you're not being reasonable, my dear. If Mr. Malleson cares for you, he can come and see you here. Why,”—Amabel's chin lifted a little—“everything else apart, Daphne, I don't think I care for the idea of my daughter running after this very rich young man.”

If she hoped to sting Daphne, she failed.

“I'm not running after him. I'm only giving him his chance, and asking to have mine. If I don't go, Amber will play it as a trump card, and make him think it's because I want to avoid him.”

Amabel bent down and picked up her sister Agatha's letter. When she had straightened it out and laid it on the window seat, she said:

“I don't want you to marry for money. Money isn't everything.”

The brilliant scarlet flared in Daphne's cheeks. She caught at her self-control, but caught at it in vain. Springing back a pace, she faced her mother with her head up, and what Amber Studland had once called her black panther look.

“Who said I was going to marry for money?” she cried, speaking so quickly that the words tumbled one upon the other. “I want money—every reasonable person wants it—but if Jimmy hadn't a halfpenny—” Her voice broke. “Now will you let me go?” she said with a sob, and stood there panting.

Amabel got up, fairer than Daphne and a head taller.

“Daphne, do control yourself.”

“Will you let me go, then?”

“My dear, I can't.” There was a weary finality in the tone.

Scenes with Daphne were exhausting. They meant blow after blow upon the tender places of her heart—the pressure of a harder and more relentless nature than her own. She felt bruised, and very tired. But what could she do? This time Daphne was asking the impossible.

“You mean you won't,” said Daphne on a low note that shook with pain and rage. “You won't do it. It's my one chance, and you won't give it to me. Can't you understand that I love Jimmy? Or doesn't it mean anything to you? After all, why should it? You simply don't understand. You gave up your own love affair pretty easily; didn't you? And I suppose you think that everyone's the same—but they're not—I'm not.”

“Daphne, stop!” said Amabel in quite a new voice. But Daphne went on:

“You gave up the man you were in love with, and married my father. I suppose Grandpapa and Grandmamma told you to—he was Grandpapa's friend and about the same age, wasn't he? Well, you couldn't have cared much, that's all I can say.”

Amabel stood rigid. The blows had never been so hard as this before.

“Daphne,” she said with white lips that hardly moved, and in a voice which did not rise above a whisper. “Daphne, who told you all this nonsense?”

“Agatha told me—so I suppose it's true.”

Daphne was a little frightened now, but still defiant. After all, she hadn't said anything very dreadful. It was absurd of Amabel to look like that. The anger, the buffeting emotion, ebbed slowly, imperceptibly; its place was taken by an odd embarrassment.

After a silence which seemed to last a long time, Amabel moved. Crossing the room, she began to fold up the orange curtains. She folded them very carefully, and put them away in the corner cupboard. Then she came back to the window seat and sat down. She did not look at Daphne, but said gently:

“Sit down, Daffy.”

And, still in the grip of that odd embarrassment, Daphne obeyed. Amabel looked at her then. The scarlet colour was gone from her cheeks; her face was white, her mouth sulky, her eyes hard and very blue.

“You know, Daphne,” said Amabel, “you don't think. If you thought, you wouldn't say things like that—at least, I hope you wouldn't.” She saw the sulky look deepen, and tried again. “Daffy, you were talking nonsense just now; but it's the sort of nonsense that hurts. I don't know what Agatha said to you, but I want you to know the truth. It's not right that you should think—” She broke off and waited for a moment. Her hands held one another tightly. “I'm sorry Agatha said anything. She oughtn't to have said anything. It's—it's all very simple really. You don't remember your father; but other people remember him still, you know, Daffy. If he couldn't leave you money, he left you a very distinguished name. I used to think him the most wonderful person in the world. When he came in in the evenings and talked to my father, I used to listen and think how wonderful he was. Then, when I was seventeen, he stopped coming. I couldn't understand why—he'd always been there, and we all loved him so much. I fretted dreadfully. Then one day my mother told me that he didn't come because he felt it wiser to stay away for a time. She said he felt that he was getting too fond of me, and that I must be sensible, and make things easy for him and for them all. I don't know what I said, or what I did—I was too happy. It seemed too wonderful that a man like Ethan Grey should really care for me. They made me wait for six months, and then we were engaged. We were to be married when I was eighteen.” Amabel paused.

Daphne was leaning forward now and listening eagerly.

It was difficult to go on. The past began to rise up vividly. The emotions, the hopes of twenty years before, stirred and came alive—the girl of seventeen in a rapture of hero worship; the parents, affectionate and delighted at the honour done their child; and Ethan Grey at the height of his fame, acclaimed by all Europe as the leading man of science of his day.

Amabel began to speak quickly and steadily:

“He had to go to Vienna to the big congress there. I went down into the country to pay a visit to a school friend. She was living with a brother and his wife. They were all very kind to me, and there was a lot going on. I had never met many young people, and I enjoyed it all tremendously. Everyone was so young and gay. It was all quite new to me. She paused for a moment, and took a hurried breath. “It was just that, you see, Daffy—they were all so young. And one of them fell in love with me, just in a headlong, young sort of way. It—it carried me off my feet. I can't think how I came to do it, but I did say that I would break off my engagement; and I went home meaning to do it. We were both very young, Daffy, and it took us off our feet. But when I got home, I found I didn't have to break off my engagement because your father had broken it off. He—he had just found out that he was going blind—an oculist in Vienna had told him so,—and he went straight to my parents and broke it off.”

“But—I don't understand.” Daphne was puzzled, frowning, and certainly interested.

The colour had rushed into Amabel's face. Her eyes shone. She looked like a girl—like the girl who had given everything in her generous enthusiasm.

“Oh, Daffy, don't you see?” she cried.

“They persuaded you?” said Daphne.

“No, no—of course not. Just think what it meant to him. Oh, Daffy, I was only too thankful that I hadn't said anything first. It would have been too dreadful.

“I don't understand a bit,” said Daphne. “Do you mean to say you just gave in?”

Amabel got up. Daphne's tone, with its hint of scorn—Daphne's obvious lack of comprehension—

She spoke very simply.

“Daffy dear, try and understand. If you remembered him it would be easier. When you love someone, and they are in frightful trouble, there's no room for anything except the wanting to help, and being so very thankful that one can.”

Daphne got up too.

“Oh, well,” she said, and stretched herself. “You're the self-sacrificing sort, Mummy: I'm not. It's a vice, really—all the best modern philosophers say so.” She laughed lightly, and flung an arm about Amabel's shoulders. “Mummy,
let
me go to Egypt,” she said.

Chapter II

Amabel sat up very late that night. She finished the orange-coloured curtains, and then sat quite still, her hands folded on the brilliant stuff, thinking.

Daphne was her only child—and Daphne was not hers at all. She could love her; but she couldn't reach her. Why were there such gulfs between people who loved one another? She simply could not reach Daphne at all. Yet the child loved her. Amabel always clung to that—Daphne did love her. When she was at her naughtiest; when she flared with rage, or looked at Amabel with the half-pitying contempt which was harder to bear, there was still that curious, unbroken strand of love linking the two together. Daphne chafed under it, resented it; but it was there.

Amabel sat very still, while the fire died and the lamplight began to fail. When at last she moved, it was to go to the window, open the shutter, and lean out.

The rain had ceased. There was a damp mist rising from the ground, thin, and white, and cold; a faint shaft of moonlight silvered it. The trees rose out of the mist like the cliffs of some black, unknown shore. The stillness and the silence were grateful.

Try as she would, Amabel could not still her thoughts or silence the echoes of those scenes with Daphne. “Self-sacrifice is your strong suit. Suppose you do a little sacrificing for me this time”—that was Daphne angry. “You gave him up pretty easily, didn't you? I don't wonder he was furious. Your affair of course; but I'd have stuck it out and had him in spite of everyone”—that was Daphne half casual, half contemptuous. Oh, it hurt, it
hurt
; after all these years it hurt most frightfully.

Twenty years were wiped out as Amabel looked into the mist. The urge of youth to youth had been very strong. The gold and the glamour of romance had not been easily renounced. One may stand in the fires of self-sacrifice and sing aloud there; and yet—and yet—Daphne couldn't understand that at all. Julian had not understood it either. The fire would not have been so hard to bear if Julian had understood. “We were both so dreadfully young.” The echo of her own words to Daphne came back upon Amabel now. Just for a moment Julian might have been there before her; she had such a vivid impression of his blazing scorn, his furious resentment. The very ring of his “You're afraid to face up to it. You're afraid of what people will say,” was in her ears.

With a quick movement she closed the shutter, fastened it, and, crossing to the hearth, began to rake out the last remnants of the fire. The log, as she stirred it, sent out a little shower of brilliant sparks. She looked at it with a touch of rather sad humour. You think a thing's dead; and then, all of a sudden, the sparks fly up—hot, burning sparks. Why, it was years and years since she had thought of Julian with pain like this. Curious how memory will stir. Julian's name in the paper this morning had not hurt at all; she had been interested, pleased to think that his work had been crowned with success after so many ups and downs. She picked up the
Times
, and read the paragraph again, the lamplight flaring and falling across the page: